Formulation of a Production Strategy for a Software Product Line

8/14/2019 Formulation of a Production Strategy for a Software Product Line

1/39

Formulation of a Production Strategy for a

Software Product Line

Gary J. Chastek

Patrick Donohoe

John D. McGregor

August 2009

TECHNICAL NOTECMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

Research, Technology, and System Solutions ProgramProduct Line Practice Initiative

Unlimited distribution subject to the copyright.

http://www.sei.cmu.edu


2/39

This report was prepared for the

SEI Administrative Agent

ESC/XPK

5 Eglin Street

Hanscom AFB, MA 01731-2100

The ideas and findings in this report should not be construed as an official DoD position. It is published in the

interest of scientific and technical information exchange.

This work is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. The Software Engineering Institute is a federally

funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Copyright 2009 Carnegie Mellon University.

NO WARRANTY

THIS CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INSTITUTE MATERIAL IS

FURNISHED ON AN "AS-IS" BASIS. CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO WARRANTIES OF

ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, AS TO ANY MATTER INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED

TO, WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR PURPOSE OR MERCHANTABILITY, EXCLUSIVITY, OR RESULTS

OBTAINED FROM USE OF THE MATERIAL. CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY DOES NOT MAKE

ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO FREEDOM FROM PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.

Use of any trademarks in this report is not intended in any way to infringe on the rights of the trademark holder.

Internal use. Permission to reproduce this document and to prepare derivative works from this document for inter-

nal use is granted, provided the copyright and "No Warranty" statements are included with all reproductions and

derivative works.

External use. This document may be reproduced in its entirety, without modification, and freely distributed in

written or electronic form without requesting formal permission. Permission is required for any other external

and/or commercial use. Requests for permission should be directed to the Software Engineering Institute at per-

[email protected].

This work was created in the performance of Federal Government Contract Number FA8721-05-C-0003 with

Carnegie Mellon University for the operation of the Software Engineering Institute, a federally funded research

and development center. The Government of the United States has a royalty-free government-purpose license to

use, duplicate, or disclose the work, in whole or in part and in any manner, and to have or permit others to do so,for government purposes pursuant to the copyright license under the clause at 252.227-7013.


3/39

i | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

Table of Contents

Abstract vii

1 Introduction 12 Production Planning 3

3 Porters Five Forces Model 5

4 Production Scenarios 7

5 Formulating a Production Strategy 95.1 Identifying the Critical Factors 9

5.1.1 Market Analysis 105.1.2 Building a Business Case 105.1.3 Scoping 105.1.4 Technology Forecasting 11

5.1.5 Understanding Relevant Domains 115.2 Formulating the Production Strategy 12

5.2.1 Generic Strategies 135.2.2 Integration 13

5.3 Example Production Strategies 145.4 Evaluating and VErifying the Production Strategy 16

6 An Example 186.1 Define production scenarios 186.2 Identify the critical factors 196.3 Formulate the Production Strategy 206.4 Evaluate the strategy 22

7 Summary 23Bibliography 25


4/39

i i | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025


5/39

i i i | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

List of Figures

Figure 1: Production Planning 3

Figure 2: Porter's Model of Forces Driving Industry Competition 5

Figure 3: Technique Overview 9


6/39

i v | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025


7/39

v | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

List of Tables

Table 1: Porter's Forces 6

Table 2: Production Scenario Format 7

Table 3: Strategic Forces 12

Table 4: Initial Production Scenario 18

Table 5: Product Line Production Scenario 18

Table 6: Portability Scenario 19

Table 7: AGM's Critical Factors 19

Table 8: AGMs Strategic Actions 21

Table 9 : Evaluation of AGM's Strategy 22


8/39

v i | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025


9/39

v i i | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

Abstract

Software product lines are of strategic importance to the organizations that adopt them, affecting

both an organizations position in an existing market and its ability to react to new and changing

markets. An organizations production system (i.e., how it builds its products) is also of strategic

importance, directly affecting, for example, that organizations ability to deliver new products

quickly (i.e., its time to market).

The production strategy for a software product line is the high-level description of how the pro-

duction system realizes both the core assets and products. The production strategy is derived from

the organizations business strategy and is intended to coordinate the actions of the core asset and

product developers. The strategy describes how the product line practices should be employed so

that the product line organization will achieve its production goals. This technical note describes a

technique, which is based on well-known procedures for defining and evaluating a business strat-

egy, for formulating the production strategy of a production system. An example of strategy crea-

tion is provided.


10/39

v i i i | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025


11/39

1 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

1 Introduction

A business strategy is the pattern or plan that integrates an organizations major goals, policies,

and action sequences into a cohesive whole [Quinn 1980]. Rumelt states that strategy is about

the direction of organizations:

It includes those subjects which are of primary concern to senior management, or to anyone

seeking reasons for the success or failure among organizations. Firms have to make choices

to survive. Those which are strategic include: the selection of goals, the choice of products

and services to offer; the design and configuration of policies determining how the firm posi-

tions itself to compete in product markets (e.g., competitive advantage); the choice of an ap-

propriate level of scope and diversity; and the design of organization structure, administra-

tive systems and policies used to define and coordinate work. It is a basic proposition of the

strategy field that these choices have critical influence on the success or failure of the enter-

prise, and, that they must be integrated. It is the integration (or reinforcing pattern) among

these choices that makes the set a strategy [Rumelt 1991].

An effective organization has many strategies, each of which aligns with the overall business

strategy. The critical factors mentioned above refer to both market conditions that affect an organ-

ization and how an organizations products can affect the market. The production strategy de-

scribes the production factors critical to the success of the product line and specifies an overall

approach to addressing those factors.

Software product lines can improve an organizations position in an existing market and its ability

to react to new and changing markets. Product lines are of strategic importance to the adopting

organizations. The production strategy is critical to the success of that product line. For example,

an organization might choose to develop products quickly to react to new market opportunities or

rapidly emerging market threats, or to develop easily customized products to target a specialized

market niche. This technical note describes a technique for developing a production strategy by eliciting and documenting an organizations requirements for the production system (i.e.,

how a product line organization chooses to develop its products) as a series of scenarios

identifying the production factors critical to the success of the organizations product line by

relating the organizations key challenges for the product line to the strategically significant

product line practice areas

identifying strategic actions that address those critical factors

refining the strategic actions into a coherent strategy based on established business strategy

development techniques such as Porters Five Forces [Porter 1998]

evaluating that strategy using Rumelts four criteria for business strategy evaluation, as de-

scribed in Section 5.3 [Rumelt 1991]

The production scenarios cut across the product line practice areas [Clements 2002] to define how

the production system operates. The scenarios provide the context in which the critical factors are

considered. Those factors constrain the strategic actions that can be deployed in the production

strategy.

The intended audience for this technical note is anyone who develops, or is responsible for devel-

oping, products or product parts (e.g., core assets) in a software product line, including product


12/39

2 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

managers, product line managers, analysts, system engineers, architects, and method and process

engineers.

The rest of this technical note is organized as follows:

Section 2 briefly describes the role of the production strategy in the larger context of produc-

tion planning for a software product line.

Section 3 introduces Porters five forces model.

Section 4 defines production scenarios.

Section 5 describes our technique for formulating a production strategy.

Section 6 provides an example of the application of the technique.

Section 7 summarizes this technical note.


13/39

3 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

2 Production Planning

In a software product line, the products are developed using the core assets. The production strat-

egy is formulated as part of production planning, which balances the goals and constraints of a

product line to ensure that the core assets effectively support product development.

Product production is viewed as a system that is engineered to have specified qualities including

the predictable building of intended products. The core assets and product development activities

must be jointly engineered to achieve the organizations goals for the software product line. The

goal of production planning is to produce a strategy, method, and plan, thereby reducing the risk

of inconsistencies between core asset and product development.

Production planning is of strategic importance to the product line organization. How an organiza-

tion develops products affects its position in the market place; how it designs its core assets af-

fects its ability to address new markets and to respond to emerging threats [Chastek 2007]. The

production capability of a software product line realizes the ability to meet business goals. With-

out a production plan, an organization has core assets but no prescribed way to use them to pre-

dictably meet the business goals.

Figure 1: Production Planning

Figure 1 illustrates production planning for a software product line:

The production strategy determines how product development satisfies the organizations

goals for the software product line and integrates the goals, policies, and actions of the prod-

uct line organization for product production.

The production method, as the overall implementation approach, determines what processes,

models, and technologies can be used to ensure consistency and the necessary variation

across the core assets based on the production strategy. The production method provides the

Production

Strategy

Production

Method

Production

Plan

Software Product

Line Business

Goals

Production

Strategy

Production

Method

Production

Plan

Software Product

Line Business

Goals


14/39

4 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

required coordination of the core assets and product development activities. This coordina-

tion includes assuring that the three essential product line activitiescore asset develop-

ment, product building, and managementeach operate at an appropriate tempo so the three

interact efficiently.

Finally, the results of the production planning are documented for the product developers in

the production plan that describes what the product developers need to know to effectivelyuse the core assets to develop products with predictable results [Chastek 2002a, Chastek

2002b].

This report describes the strategy formulation portion of production planning.


15/39

5 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

3 Porters Five Forces Model

Many of the production goals for a software product line are driven by the actions and activities of

the organizations competitors. Michael Porter produced a widely used model that addresses com-

petitive strategy [Porter 1998]. Porters intent was to establish a strategy that provides competitive

advantage for the organization using the model. Porter classified the competitive forces acting on

the organization into the five categories shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Porter's Model of Forces Driving Industry Competition[Porter 1979]

The organization uses the model to guide its business strategy development. The organization de-

termines the forces at work in its specific business environment and proposes actions that would

address those forces, ultimately synthesizing a competitive strategy from the selected action.

In Table 1, we situate Porters model in the context of a software product line organization. We

also begin considering how each force applies to product production by asking an example ques-

tion about the meaning of each force in a product line production environment. In practice, manysuch questions need to be asked.

PotentialEntrants

Substitutes

Suppliers BuyersBargaining

Power

BargainingPower

Threats

Threats

IndustryCompetitors

Rivalry

PotentialEntrants

Substitutes

Suppliers BuyersBargaining

Power

BargainingPower

Threats

Threats

IndustryCompetitors

Rivalry

IndustryCompetitors

Rivalry


16/39

6 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

Table 1: Porter's Forces

Force Name Porters Definition Examples of Product Line

Context Questions

Industry Com-

petitors

those organizations that are address-

ing the same market need or mission

as yours

How can we gain advantage over the competi-

tion by choosing different production tech-

niques?

Potential En-

trants

a product or service that might become

available to be used in place of yours

How can we raise the cost to others of entering

the market by the means we use to produce

the products?

Buyers those who are currently purchasing

your product or service

How can we more quickly respond to buyers

requests through attributes of the production

process?

Substitutes a currently available product or service

that could be used in place of yours

How can we differentiate our product from the

substitutes through the means of production?

Suppliers those who provide some portion of the

content of your product or service

How can we lower the prices we pay suppliers

by the production techniques we use?

In Section 5 we incorporate this business strategy development model into our technique for

creating the production strategy. In addition to the model, Porter identifies three generic strate-

gies: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus that resolve the five forces. These strategies are

defined and discussed in Section 5.2.


17/39

7 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

4 Production Scenarios

Product production in a software product line can be viewed as a system in its own right, the so-

called production system. The primary input to that system is a description of the product to be

developed while the primary output is the requested product. As with any system, the production

system has associated functionality and qualities that can be described using scenarios. For exam-

ple, the tools used in product development are the functions of the production system. More rele-

vant to the production strategy are the qualities of the production system (i.e., the production qual-

ities). Performance is a typical example, usually expressed as time to market (i.e., the time from

receipt of a product order until that product is delivered). Flexibility, the ability to deliver custo-

mized products, is another such example. Production scenarios express the different circums-

tances under which products will be built from the core assets. The scenarios provide a high-level

view of the development process, deferring specific details until the strategy is developed. These

scenarios are used to both

explore the required characteristics of the production system, such as the production qualitiesneeded to satisfy the product line business goals and

ensure that the production strategy is formulated with sufficient breadth and depth to address

the needs of the complete product line

We have adopted the scenario format used for quality attribute analysis for guiding the develop-

ment and evaluation of software architectures [Bass 2003]. A scenario takes the form of a stimu-

lus/response with a description of the context within which the action occurs. A scenario descrip-

tion is decomposed into the six sections listed in Table 2.

Table 2: Production Scenario Format

Scenario

Element

Product Line Interpretation Example of Scenario

Element

Stimulus The event or action that affects the development of a

product

A requested product requires a

new target platform.

Source of

Stimulus

Who or what is initiating the production of this product A customer requests a new

product feature.

Environment The state of the production capability of the product

line at the time of this scenario; for example, all core

assets are completed and available for use

Product development has be-

come routine.

Artifact The artifact acted upon; this can be the product being

produced or a core asset being used.

The artifacts can be new prod-

uct-specific or existing core as-

sets for the new platform.

Response How the production system responds to the request to

produce a specific product; for example, how long will it

take to produce this product?

The requested product is devel-

oped successfully.

Response

Measure

Some common response measures are calendar days

from purchase contract to deployment, cost in dollars,

or days of effort.

The requested product is deli-

vered in less than two days from

the time of its request.


18/39

8 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

Production scenarios are used to

refine the critical factors (see Section 5.1) associated with the production system

create a prioritized list of production qualities1

that is used during strategy development to

resolve conflicts among strategic actions that have inconsistent effects on the product line

verify that the production strategy selected satisfies the business goals of the product line

Testing-style coverage techniques are used to define the set of scenarios. For example, where two

products will be built differently, the organization determines what causes the difference and

identifies scenarios that address the circumstances under which each technique is used.

Each event or action that initiates the development of a product may be analyzed in terms of one

or more scenarios. The set of scenarios is defined to achieve the following:

Each scenario addresses the production systems response with respect to a single production

quality in a specific situation.

Each development approach is exercised in a sufficient number of scenarios to explore all of

its variations.

Each production quality attribute is exercised in a sufficient number of scenarios to addressthe full range of values for the attribute.

1Chastek defines production qualities and describes how to elicit and analyze them [Chastek 2003].


19/39

9 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

5 Formulating a Production Strategy

The technique for formulating a production strategy is shown in Figure 3. The organization ex-

amines the work products of the strategically significant product line practice areas (described in

Section 5.1) to identify additional factors and trends critical to the success of the organizations

product production. Those factors and trends are consolidated into a production strategy using

Porters Five Forces model. The strategy is then evaluated using Rumelts four criteria. Produc-

tion scenarios are used in each step of the technique to determine precisely what that goal means

for the production system.

Figure 3: Technique Overview

The production strategy is developed iteratively starting with identifying the critical factors. The

critical factors have many interactions, and identifying new factors may influence the other fac-

tors identified previously. Additional iterations are necessary to resolve these influences and mod-

ify the strategy to ensure a consistent and coherent strategy. All too often, this iteration occurs

because a problem is encountered very late in the cycle. Measurement and tracking can give early

warnings by looking for attributes that fluctuate or for sections of the production plan that gener-ate an extraordinary number of problem reports. Since the critical factors can change over the life-

time of the software product line, the production strategy evolves. Changes in the strategy are

propagated through the production process.

5.1 IDENTIFYING THE CRITICAL FACTORS

In the Rumelt quote in Section 5.3, the critical factors mentioned are associated with strategic op-

portunities and threats, the quality of long-term results, measurability and flexibility for effective

and timely responses, and ultimately organizational success. Presumably, the organizations strat-

egy for choosing a software product line approach identifies relevant critical factors that will af-

fect the production strategy. These critical factors can describe an organizations potential posi-

tioning in a market, or they can constrain that organizations efforts to position itself in that

market.

The successful prosecution of the product line practice areas identifies an organizations critical

product line success factors [Clements 2002]. Potentially, any of the 29 practices areas can be the

source of factors or trends that can affect the production strategy. However, certain practice areas

are directly tied to the product line organizations business goals and hence are vital to the formu-

lation of the production strategy, while other practice areas primarily constrain or refine that strat-

Define

ProductionScenarios

Formulate

Production

Strategy

Evaluate

Production

Strategy

Identify

Critical

Factors

Define

ProductionScenarios

Formulate

Production

Strategy

Evaluate

Production

Strategy

Identify

Critical

Factors


20/39

10 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

egy. This section discusses the practices areas used in the What to Build pattern, which have typi-

cally been applied in the earliest planning stages of a software product line [Clements 2002].

5.1.1 Market Analysis

Market analysis is the systematic research and analysis of the external factors that determine the

success of a product in the marketplace [Clements 2007]. The market analysis contains informa-tion about buyers of the product lines products as well as current competitors and potential en-

trants into the market. The analysis identifies the features of the products purchased by members

of the target audience. This analysis provides the strategists with predictions of which features

products must provide immediately and gives a prediction of the evolution of the feature set.

Example of a critical factor: the demand for a particular feature may not justify costs associated

with particular production techniques. For example, the market analysis in a technical organiza-

tion, such as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), will often examine how customers ex-

pect their products to be built. A customer might require a specific Capability Maturity Model

Integration (CMMI) level of certification to provide additional confidence in the quality of the

products. Moving the organization to that level may simply not be justified based on the custom-

ers anticipated sales volume.

5.1.2 Building a Business Case

A business case addresses the following key questions that an organization faces when planning

major changes in how it does business:

What specific changes must occur?

What are the benefits of making the change?

What are the costs and risks?

How do we measure success? [Clements 2007]

The business case defines the boundaries within which the production system must operate. Fac-

tors affecting the production system arise in the business environment such as the rhythm at which

the business operates, how often products will be released, and how rapidly products in the do-

main are changing.

Example of a critical factor: the time horizon for refreshing products. Essentially, the lifetime of

a product influences the production strategy. For example, most people expect to exchange their

cell phones every two years to get a new model with many new features. Can the long-term pro-

duction strategy support that rate of product release? A few years ago, the answer was no. By

changing its means of production, one cell phone manufacturer was able to decrease the time to

produce a product, while also reducing the staff required by the production process.

5.1.3 ScopingScoping is the activity that bounds the set of systems that compose the product line by defining

those behaviors or aspects that are in and those behaviors or aspects that are out [Clements

2007]. The product line scope provides factors that constrain the operation of the production sys-

tem. Determining the scope provides a basis for determining the variations, and hence the binding

times, that will be most important to the success of the product line.


21/39

11 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

Example of a critical factor: the influence of the product lines homogeneity on the production

strategy. If one product requires a very different production process from the rest of the product

line, its expense should be balanced against the reasons for including the product in the product

line. Real-time, embedded products require activities such as performance modeling and instance

tuning. If some of the products in the product line are for mobile devices and require the real-time

techniques and others are data-intensive applications that require database tuning, the productionstrategy will be more complex with more decision points.

5.1.4 Technology Forecasting

Technology forecasting addresses trends in two areas:

1. technologies that support internal software development, which includes tools, processes,

and methods for producing the software that will end up in products

2. customer solutions, meaning technologies that will affect (or end up as) features or capabili-

ties embedded in products [Clements 2007]

The technology forecast provides information about substitutes for the product lines products,

suppliers to the product line, and to a lesser extent, potential entrants into the same market. Thetechnology forecast provides a look at both domain-related technologies and product-building

technologies. The latter forecasts enable the strategists to anticipate the evolution in building

techniques and tools. In some cases, the introduction of a feature may be timed to coincide with

the availability of certain tool capabilities. For example, the use of introspective techniques used

in some self-adaptive systems was facilitated by the introduction of languages with reflective ca-

pabilities.

Example of a critical factor: The technologies used to produce a product make a difference to

certain types of technical customers. The people who market products to them are a valuable

source of information regarding their customers technology concerns. These concerns should

influence the production strategy. For example, when Java first emerged, it was viewed by some

as a web programming language that would be used in applications where time and space wereunimportant. A few vendors of micro-platform products such as cell phones saw the potential.

Today, most application packages running on top of cell-phone platforms are written in Java.

Companies with Java expertise have been able to capitalize on that.

5.1.5 Understanding Relevant Domains

The practice of understanding the relevant domains involves

identifying the areas of expertisedomainsthat are useful for building the product or

products under consideration

identifying the recurring problems and known solutions within these domains

capturing and representing this information in ways that allow it to be communicated to thestakeholders and used and reused across the entire effort [Clements 2007]

Modeling techniques such as product line analysis are based on a broader analysis than that of the

current market or target audience [Chastek 2001]. Product line analysis considers the full scope of

products that are currently available and those that are anticipated. It defines and bounds the varia-

tion across the products of the product line as well and define a vocabulary that the core asset devel-

oper and product developers can use to communicate. The analyst identifies optional features by


22/39

12 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

considering the feature sets of competitors, their projected upgrade paths, and standards efforts. The

information captured includes information about production qualities such as binding times.

Example of a critical factor: the velocity at which a domain is changing. The product line organ-

ization must balance planning horizons with the rate at which fundamental knowledge is becom-

ing obsolete. Areas such as service-oriented architectures and grid computing are changing at a

rate that makes production planning for products, even a couple of years ahead, very risky. Thehigher the velocity, the more flexible the production strategy must be.

5.2 FORMULATING THE PRODUCTION STRATEGY

We use Porters Five Forces model to transform the critical factors and production scenarios into

a set of strategic actions (actions that affect the organizations position in its market) that specify

the capabilities of the production system [Porter 1998].

Each force is examined in the context of the production scenarios. The business goals and the re-

sults of the market analysis and technology forecasts, as noted in Section 5.1, provide information

that can be used to select the strategic actions the product line organization should take to address

these scenarios. The priorities among production qualities are used to filter and prioritize the stra-tegic actions.

We impose a meaning on each force by specifying the strategic actions that would help resolve

each force. Table 3 lists the forces and corresponding potential strategic actions for resolving

them. The examples of strategic actions in the third column of Table 3 show how the actions can

be used to develop a production strategy.

Table 3: Strategic Forces

Force Strategic Actions Examples of Strategic Actions

Substitutes Raise switching costs.

Increase brand loyalty.

Reduce production costs to enable us to lower

prices and make substitute products unattractive.

Potential Entrants Raise cost of entry.

Utilize economies of scale.

Reduce the cost of mass customization by auto-

mating product production.

Buyers Differentiate products.

Exert bargaining leverage.

Establish a sufficiently flexible production system to

meet the varying demands of buyers.

Suppliers Exploit volume of products.

Differentiate inputs.

Use the economies of scale in a product line to

leverage purchases of tools and components.

Competitors Exploit relationships.

Improve features and innovat-

ing.

Adopt production techniques that support rapid

changes to existing features and rapid introduction

of new features.

The organization forms the strategy by selecting actions to resolve each of the five forces sepa-

rately and then resolving any conflicts among the selected actions.


23/39

13 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

5.2.1 Generic Strategies

Porter identified three generic strategies that aid the formulation of a production strategy:

1. cost leadership: Provide the lowest cost product for a given market and level of product qual-

ity. A product line organization is usually in a position to adopt this strategy as the strategic

reuse made possible through a product line greatly reduces the amount of software needed to

build a specific product. Also, the separation of core asset development from product devel-

opment (which is one possible organization) allows for a differentiated work force. That is,

less skilled, and presumably lower paid, workers can produce the products using assets de-

signed by a smaller, but more highly skilled, core asset team.

2. differentiation: Offer products or services that are perceived as unique and valuable. A prod-

uct line organization can differentiate its products in many ways. From a production perspec-

tive, the two most apparent ways are through mass customization and reduced time to mar-

ket. The market analysis provides information about required and desired features as well as

needed time to market to outpace competitors. A well-defined set of variation points allows a

product line organization to differentiate itself from its competitors and to provide a wider

range of products by composing features in many different combinations instead of a fewstandard combinations.

3. focus: Concentrate on a narrow market segment and pursue cost leadership or differentiation

within that segment. A product line organization carefully scopes the set of products based

on business priorities to focus on specific product feature sets. The scoping activity provides

the opportunity to adjust the focus due to changing conditions and forecasts.

For an example of applying a generic strategy, consider the substitutes force and the accompa-

nying strategic actions in Table 3. One possible strategy is to adopt the differentiation generic

strategy: specifically to reduce the time to market a new product. An organization might imple-

ment this type of strategy by making portability a quality attribute of the product line architecture

and by using a language such as Java that supports fine-grained product structure. Very little ofthe product has to be recompiled, and even the new deployment package is virtually unchanged.

5.2.2 Integration

Once identified, the strategic actions must be examined as a group and integrated into a coherent,

cohesive strategy.

Examine the set for inconsistencies. Two actions that have opposite effects on the product

line must be resolved by yielding to the production quality that has a higher priority.

Actions that share a common theme can be grouped into an encompassing action.

The resulting strategy should be easy to understand and give clear direction to the core asset and

product developers. For example, consider the actions for Substitutes and Suppliers in Table 3.Both of these actions call for a reduction in costs. The resulting strategy would call for reducing

the cost of tools, training, and other production expenses. The Buyers and Competitors actions are

focused on flexibility. The production strategy would call for low-cost, configurable tools.


24/39

14 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

5.3 PRODUCTION STRATEGY EXAMPLES

What are some standard production strategies that are used, or could be used, in the production

strategy of a software product line organization?

1. Be open. Use open source software and contribute to open source projects. Ultimately your

organization might choose to start a new open source project to get exactly what it needs

[Mebane 2007]. This strategy lowers the boundaries of the organization and stimulates the

flow of assets into and out of the core asset base. The organization assigns people to survey

existing open source projects and, in some cases, to participate in appropriate open source ef-

forts. The organization can take advantage of their employees outside affiliations to be

aware of the directions of open source projects and to influence those directions where poss-

ible. This strategy affects core asset production more than product building. The production

method, based on this strategy, will provide techniques for certifying some open source

software to be added to the core asset base as is and techniques for extending and integrating

the open source contributions to fulfill the needs of the core asset base. The portion of the

production plan related to development of the unique portion of a product directs product

builders to search available open sources before building a new asset and encourages teamsto consider which, if any, of the assets created during product production might be appropri-

ate for sharing with the wider community.

2. Be evolutionary. Include the user in the development process by providing early releases of

minimal functionality to stimulate feedback [Bosch 2002]. This strategy explicitly defines a

roadmap of successive expansions of the core assets capabilities. The strategy eventually

produces a full set of assets including documentation and management plans. The production

method describes how to incorporate the feedback of actual users working with early proto-

types. This strategy is iterative and incremental at the level of the core asset base. Each asset

evolves to a degree of completeness that is useful. The production plan maps out how to

maintain consistency among the assets as they evolve somewhat independently.

3. Be agile. Develop very small increments before stopping to assess and chart future direc-

tions. Doing so enables you to anticipate changes and handle them easily [Paige 2006]. A

number of development methods such as SCRUM and test-first provide support for this

strategy. The production method for a product line organization using this strategy provides

tools that manage the multiple iterations and versions of products. The production plan de-

scribes how to identify, schedule, and integrate the increments of functionality. The produc-

tion plan must provide guidance to developers on when to iterate and provide conflict resolu-

tion devices as the multiple threads of activity interact. This strategy is iterative and

incremental at the level of individual assets.

4. Be acquisitive. Acquire as much of the software as possible [Bergey 2006]. This strategy

affects the development of core assets more than their use. It subsumes the open source strat-

egy and includes all strategies of acquisition including purchasing off-the-shelf software, as

well as commissioning custom assets from an outside organization. The production method

defines criteria for the various forms of acquisition as well as criteria for qualifying an out-

side asset for inclusion in the core asset base. The portion of the production plan related to

development of the unique portion of a product directs product builders to search all availa-

ble sources for the required assets.


25/39

15 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

5. Be standard. Seek out and use open standards. Participate in standards development so that

you have maximum impact [Hoyer 2006]. This strategy constrains the development of core

assets where there are applicable standards. The production strategy calls for assets to be de-

signed to be compatible with standards defined in the domains of interest. This compatibility

increases the possibility that the open source and acquisitive strategies will be successful in

finding pre-existing implementations for specific assets. The production method describes aprocess for tracking the evolution of standards and techniques for integrating new versions of

the standards. The production plan includes actions applying the test cases that accompany

the standards, where available.

6. Be automated. Enable the engineers to carry out repetitive functions quickly and correctly.

This strategy requires more up-front investment than more manual development strategies.

Complex operations such as building the product can be repeated quickly and accurately

[White 2007]. In this strategy, the information needed to build a product or to run tests is en-

coded to allow automatic execution of certain actions. Development information usually

must be more constrained to ensure completeness and consistency. The production method

defines activities in which assets are defined and maintained in machine-readable form. The

production plan describes which tools product builders are to use for each of the product-

building actions.

7. Be generative. Generate low-level artifacts such as source code and detailed documents

from higher level models. This strategy moves maintenance and extensibility to a more gen-

eral level [Czarnecki 2005]. A generative production strategy will result in a production me-

thod that defines a layer of model development and specifies a set of modeling tools and lan-

guages. The method spells out a sequence of transformations that begin with early models,

proceeds through the architecture, and ends with compilable code. The product-specific pro-

duction plan is at least partially generated from a template and the attached processes from

other assets. In this strategy, modification of products and assets is managed through the

modification of models rather than source code or documents.

8. Be transformative. Allow dissimilar data formats to be aligned. This strategy reduces the

effort needed to write filters that glue tools together [McRitchie 2004]. A transformative

production strategy results in a production method that uses a small number of meta-models,

preferably one, as the basis for models of various kinds of development information. Trans-

formations are constructed that create one model from another using meta-models and lan-

guages such as Query/View/Transformation (QVT) from the Object Management Group or

the Active Template Library (ATL) from Microsoft. The production plan defines activities in

which the product line models are transformed into the required product-specific models.


26/39

16 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

5.4 EVALUATING AND VERIFYING THE PRODUCTION STRATEGY

Rumelt describes the purpose of business strategy evaluation:

For many executives strategy evaluation is simply an appraisal of how well a business per-

forms. Has it grown? Is the profit rate normal or better? If the answers to these questions

are affirmative, it is argued that the firms strategy must be sound. Despite its unassailablesimplicity, this line of reasoning misses the whole point of strategythat the critical factors

determining the quality of long-term results are often not directly observable or simply

measured, and that by the time strategic opportunities or threats do directly affect operating

results, it may well be too late for an effective response. Thus, strategy evaluation is an at-

tempt to look beyond the obvious facts regarding the short-term health of a business and ap-

praise instead those more fundamental factors and trends that govern success in the chosen

field of endeavor [Rumelt 1999].

Rumelt also provides four criteria for evaluating a business strategy that are applicable to a pro-

duction strategy for a product line:

consistency: The strategy must not suggest contradictory goals and actions.

consonance: The strategy should create more value than it costs. advantage: The strategy should provide competitive advantage.

feasibility: The strategy must be achievable with the resources available.

We now discuss each criterion in the context of the strategy formulation process outlined in Sec-

tion 5.1 through 5.3. The production strategy formulation technique outlined above produces ef-

fective strategies as evidenced by

consistency - Prioritizing the production qualities derived from the product line goals pro-

vides a basis for making decisions that resolve inconsistencies among the elements of the

strategy. Using Porters model produces actions that are intended to resolve each of the

forces. These actions, which will become the basis for the production method, are examined

and conflicts resolved based on the impacts on the product qualities. The prioritization of theproduction qualities and the integration of their associated strategic actions into a complete

strategy ensure that no contradictions are introduced.

consonance - Serving as a bridge between the business goals and the production method, the

production strategy provides great value. It ensures that the production method will initially

meet the needs of the product line organization and provides a mechanism by which the me-

thod can evolve in concert with the business goals. A good way to evaluate consonance is to

attempt to create a mapping between the production scenarios and the production strategy. If

such a mapping can be created, the strategy is consonant with the intended uses described in

the scenarios.

advantage - Many organizations waste time and resources on producing products becausethey do not carefully coordinate how products are produced. The economies resulting from

production planning bring an advantage that can be used in many ways, such as in reducing

prices or in rapidly delivering products. Formulating the strategy is the beginning of a value

chain in which the production strategy informs the production method, which, in turn, results

in a production plan that is closely aligned with the business goals of the product line. This

chain cuts across the organizational management, technical management, and software engi-


27/39

17 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

neering dimensions of the organization. The chain defines a conduit through which feedback,

repairs, and evolutionary changes can be passed effectively.

feasibility - The strategic actions that constitute the strategy cannot require more resources

than have been budgeted for. Further, there needs to be a balance among the five forces so

that no one force consumes a majority of the available resources. Feasibility can be judged

by determining the impact of the change needed to implement the strategy. For example, anorganization that has what it believes is a successful reuse program will probably not be able

to immediately see a 50% increase in its reuse rate. An organization with no previous reuse

experience may well be able to achieve large gains initially with these increases tapering off

as more of the available methods are used.


28/39

18 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

6 An Example

This example of production strategy formulation features a fictitious company, Arcade Game

Maker (AGM) that wants to adopt a product line approach to achieve its business goals. AGM, a

subsidiary of a multinational corporation, produces a series of software-intensive products deli-

vered directly to retailers that, in turn, sell them directly to individual consumers. The company is

one of several subsidiaries that share portions of the product roadmap established by the parent

corporation. They all make similar products but for somewhat different markets [SEI 2008].

The AGM product line is a set of video games. A comprehensive set of core and product-specific

assets has been developed for use as a full-scale sample product line.2

In this section, we present

an example of production strategy development for AGM.

The AGM organization is adopting the software product line approach to product development.

As part of its adoption strategy, the organization has decided to take an incremental approach to

rolling out the core assets and products. The first increment will be a set of open source imple-

mentations of the games that will be made available for download. Succeeding increments will

expand the feature set and the possible variations. The question now is what production tech-

niques will help AGM meet its goals.

6.1 DEFINE PRODUCTION SCENARIOS

AGM is currently a traditional software vendor and the first products will be built using the Ra-

tional Unified Process (RUP), albeit modified for product lines. Management hopes that the prod-

uct line approach will result in a simplified form of development in later increments. Two scena-rios, shown in Table 4 and Table 5 , describe the initial and eventual situations, respectively.

Table 4: Initial Production Scenario

Stimulus A game is requested in the early days of the product line.Source of stimulus A request comes from the marketing VP for one of AGMs largest markets.

Environment Product building has just begun, and the core assets have not had time to

mature.

Artifact The requested game and modified core assets are the outputs of this ef-

fort.

Response The game is available for deployment.

Response Measure The game is available in less than two weeks from time of request.

Table 5: Product Line Production Scenario

Stimulus A game is requested after the product line organization has matured.

Source of stimulus A request comes from the marketing VP for one of AGMs largest markets.

Environment Product building has become routine.

Artifact new game

Response The game is deployed on the new platform.

Response Measure The new game is deployed in less than two days from time of request.

2The core assets mentioned in this example are available at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/productlines/ppl.


29/39

19 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

The production strategy should also handle the anticipated variations and modifications. The sce-

nario about porting to a new platform, shown in Table 6, will represent several other possible var-

iations.

Table 6: Portability Scenario

Stimulus A requested game requires a new build for a new platform.Source of stimulus A product builder requests a new build.

Environment Product building has become routine.

Artifact requested game and new or modified assets for new platform

Response The game is deployed on the new platform.

Response Measure The game is deployed on the new platform in less than five days from time

of request.

6.2 IDENTIFY THE CRITICAL FACTORS

AGM performed an initial iteration of the What to Build pattern and identified the critical factors

found in Table 7.

Table 7: AGM's Critical Factors

Practice Area Critical Factors

Market analysis The specialized nature of the mobile platforms requires that prod-

ucts be compatible with a larger infrastructure. Some platform

manufacturers provide software development kits for their prod-

ucts.

Building a business case The need to provide the freeware products in time for them to

affect the number of people who purchase the mobile device

products.

Scoping The AGM products only require static binding times. Customizable

features are handled by a standard configuration file.

Technology forecasting The forecasts for changes in mobile platforms identify areas that

must remain flexible.

Understanding relevant domains The domain is so widely understood that using domain-specific

languages decreases the learning curve for new staff.

AGMs business case lists four strategic objectives that are an important input into the technique

for developing a production strategy. The production strategy should address any of these that can

be affected by how products are produced.

1. Become a market leader: Currently two other companies have a larger market share. This

market is sensitive to how rapidly new technologies are introduced into products and the

scope of the feature set. The company has been a late adopter of new technologies such as

C++ and Java. To achieve its strategic objective, the company decided it at least must be-

come an early adopter [Moore 2002].

Factor to consider: Typically, an economist sees the demand for a product increasing as the

price is reduced. So using the differentiation generic strategy should improve AGMs po-


30/39

20 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

sition in the market. Specifically, how can AGM get a broader array of products into the

market more rapidly?

2. Reduce time to market: AGM will be able to produce products at an increasingly rapid

rate. Ideas for games come from a number of sources. Many ideas come from the popular

media where an idea has a very short lifespan. AGM must be quick to develop and deploy

any games based on the popularity of a media or sports figure or one inspired by an actualevent.

Factor to consider: By introducing products more rapidly, AGM intends to capture the early

adopters who are often influential in the user community. How can AGM reduce the time it

takes to produce a product? Perhaps by exploiting the commonality among games, AGM can

standardize and generalize.

3. Increase productivity: AGM will increase productivity so that the labor content per product

decreases. Software makes up roughly 90% of the content of current products. To remain

competitive, AGM must reduce the cost of building the games.

Factor to consider: By getting more production from each worker, AGM would be able to

adopt a lower cost strategy. How can more features be delivered per engineer hour? Perhaps

raising the level of abstraction at which engineers work would allow them to produce output

that can be transformed into concrete assets.

4. Enable mass customization of products: AGM will be able to serve more specialty mar-

kets. The current product development process requires too many resources to make products

with projected sales of under a million units profitable. The parent companys marketing di-

vision sees an opportunity in the area of convention giveaway products. It would like to be

able to add a companys logo and other advertising marks to a game and sell it to that com-

pany as a marketing handout at conventions.

Factor to consider: AGM wishes to differentiate itself from other game manufacturers who

either have a fixed set of games or a fixed set of parameters that can be adjusted at installa-

tion time. AGM wishes to provide specific types of customization to create different prod-

ucts based on customer requests. At what points in the development process should varia-

tions be bound? Perhaps through evolution, AGM can incrementally approach the level of

customization it would like to achieve.

6.3 FORMULATE THE PRODUCTION STRATEGY

AGM specifically considered the critical factors in the context of the five competitive forces iden-

tified by Porter. The forces must be countered by either one of the generic strategies discussed

previously or one of the more specific production strategies listed in Section 5.3. Table 8 shows

AGMs approach to resolving each force.


31/39

21 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

Table 8: AGMs Strategic Actions

Force Name Porter definition AGMs Strategic Action

Substitutes a currently available product or

service that could be used in place

of yours

Using a lower cost strategy early, made possi-

ble by reuse of legacy assets, will discourage our

customers from switching vendors. Later, a diffe-

rentiation strategy that takes advantage of the

increased ability to customize will keep custom-ers from switching.

Potential

entrants

a product or service that might be-

come available to be used in place

of yours

By carefully mining legacy assets, AGM will take

advantage of its extensive domain knowledge to

more quickly produce accurate implementations.

This will raise the cost of entrance into the mar-

ket for any organization not currently in the mar-

ket. These assets can help AGM become auto-

mated more rapidly.

Buyers those who are currently purchasing

your product or service

The business strategists have decided to have

an initial increment of products that are free with

later increments having more features at a higher

cost. AGM will continue development in the

same manner in the short term while developinga basis for cheaper, quicker production in the

future.

Suppliers those who provide some portion of

the content of your product or ser-

vice

In organizing and managing a group of products,

AGM has increased leverage with suppliers. By

being standardized, its production process will

allow AGM to switch suppliers more easily to

obtain better prices or faster delivery. By being

acquisitive, AGM can obtain what it needs as

cheaply as possible.

Competition those organizations that are

addressing the same market need

or mission as yours

Through proper analysis of variation and selec-

tion of appropriate binding times for those va-

riants, AGM can incrementally introduce addi-

tional features.

The strategic actions are then synthesized into actionable statements that constitute AGMs pro-

duction strategy:

We will produce the initial products using a traditional iterative, incremental development

process that uses a standard programming language, integrated development environment

(IDE), and available libraries. We will create domain-based assets, including a product line

architecture and software components, for the initial products in the product line in a manner

that will support a migration to automatic generation of the second- and third-increment

products.


32/39

22 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

6.4 EVALUATE THE STRATEGY

Rumelts criteria for strategy evaluation are the basis for the evaluation of the AGM strategy, as

shown in Table 9.

Table 9 : Evaluation of AGM's Strategy

Criteria Evaluation

Consistency No contradictions have been found.

Consonance Our production strategy results in a production system that encompasses a large

number of possible products.

Advantage The chosen production strategy is tightly aligned with the business goals, which

gives us the advantage in executing our plans.

Feasibility The strategy is realistic and relies on technologies that exist and will be sufficiently

mature by the time we need them.

AGM applies these evaluative criteria as the strategy is developed, until a satisfactory strategy

emerges.


33/39

23 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

7 Summary

Successful product production is the result of coordination between core asset and product devel-

opment. The production strategy provides this coordination by defining a common direction

rooted in the business goals and guided by the contrasting influences of the commonalities and

variations among products.

A software product line is long-lived and encompasses the development of a group of similar

products. As a result, strategic planning is more of a necessity than for projects that develop a sin-

gle product at one point in time. A product line organization must consider how evolution of re-

sources and techniques will affect product production over the lifetime of the product line.

The result of the strategic planning effort is an effective production system that can be evolved as

the product line evolves. It can be evolved because of the traceability from the business goals to

the techniques used to implement the strategies. It can be improved by the periodic evaluation of

the measurable business goals.

A product line organization seeks to achieve specific strategic goals. Strategic planning of the

production system is tied directly to the organizations goals. By explicitly defining strategic ac-

tions that address the forces on the product line, the organization is able to create a comprehensive

strategy that is broadly based and includes the desired goals. This strategy is a sound basis for

engineering the production method, which specifies in detail the technologies, models, and

processes that will be used to produce products.


34/39

24 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025


35/39

25 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

Bibliography

URLs are valid as of the publication date of this document.

[Bass 2003]Bass, L.; Clements, P.; & Kazman, R. Software Architecture in Practice. Addison-Wesley Profes-

sional, 2003.

[Bergey 2006]Bergey, J. & Cohen, S. Product Line Acquisition in a DoD Organization-Guidance for Decision

Makers (CMU/SEI-2006-TN-020, ADA447911). Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mel-

lon University, 2006.

[Bosch 2002]Bosch, J. Maturity and Evolution In Software Product Lines: Approaches, Artifacts And Organi-

zation. Second International Software Product Line Conference. (SPLC 2002). August 2002, San

Diego, CA. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2379, Springer, 2002.

[Chastek 2001]Chastek, G.; Donohoe, P.; Kang, Kyo Chul; & Thiel, S. Product Line Analysis: A Practical Intro-

duction (CMU/SEI-2001-TR-001, ADA396137). Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mel-

lon University, 2001.

[Chastek 2002a]Chastek, G.; Donohoe, P.; McGregor, J. D. Product Line Production Planning for the Home Inte-

gration System Example (CMU/SEI-2002-TN-009, ADA403867), Software Engineering Institute,

Carnegie Mellon University, 2002.

[Chastek 2002b]Chastek, G. & McGregor, J. D. Guidelines for Developing a Product Line Production Plan,(CMU/SEI-2002-TR-006, ADA406687). Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon Uni-

versity, 2002.

[Chastek 2003]Chastek, G.; & Donohoe, P. Product Line Analysis for Practitioners (CMU/SEI-2003-TR-008,

ADA421616). Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 2003.

[Chastek 2007]Chastek, G; Donohoe, P; & McGregor, J. A Production System for Software Product Lines:

117-128. 11th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2007), September 2007,

Kyoto, Japan. Computer Society Press, 2007.

[Clements 2002]Clements, P; & Northrop, L. Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns. Addison-Wesley,

2001.


36/39

26 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

[Clements 2007]Clements, Paul & Northrop, Linda. Framework for Software Product Line Practice, V5.0.

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/productlines/framework.html (2007).

[Czarnecki 2005]Czarnecki, Krzysztof. Overview of Generative Software Development Unconventional Pro-

gramming Paradigms.Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3566. Springer , 2005.

[Hoyer 2006]Hoyer, C, & Chroust, G. Evolving Standard Process Reference Models for Product Line Devel-

opment, 320- 327. Proceedings of the 32nd EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering

and Advanced Applications. AugustSeptember 2006, Cavtat/Dubrovnik, Croatia. IEEE Comput-

er Society, 2006.

[McRitchie 2004]McRitchie, I; Brown, T. J; & Spence, I. Managing Component Variability within Embedded

Software Product Lines via Transformational Code Generation, Software Product-Family Engi-

neering.Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3014 . Springer, 2004.

[Mebane 2007]Mebane, H. & Ohta, J.T. Dynamic Complexity and the Owen Firmware Product Line Program.

Proceedings of the 11th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2007). Septem-

ber 2007, Kyoto, Japan. Computer Society Press, 2007.

[Moore 2002]Moore, Geoffrey A. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Main-

stream Customers (revised ed). Collins Business, 2002.

[Paige 2006]Paige, Richard F.; Wang, Xiaochen; Stephenson, Zo R.; & Brooke, Phillip J. Towards An

Agile Process For Building Software Product Lines, Extreme Programming And Agile ProcessesIn Software Engineering,Lecture Notes In Computer Science4044. Springer, 2006.

[Porter 1998]Porter, Michael E. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. FreePress, 1998.

[Porter 1979]Michael E. Porter. How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy.Harvard Business Review 57,

(Mar-Apr.): 86-93, 1979.

[Quinn 1980]

Quinn, James B. Strategies for Change: Logical Incrementalism: Richard D. Irwin, Inc, 1980.

[Rumelt 1991]Rumelt, Richard P. Strategic Management and Economics. Strategic Management Journal 12:

5-29, 1991.

[Rumelt 1999]Rumelt, Richard P.Note on Strategy Evaluation. Anderson School at UCLA, (POL 1999-1.3)

1999.


37/39

27 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

[SEI 2008]Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.Arcade Game Maker Pedagogical

Product Line. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/productlines/ppl/ (2008).

[White 2007]White, J.; Schmidt, D.C.; Wuchner, E.; & Nechypurenko, A. Automating Product-Line Variant

Selection for Mobile Devices:129-140. 11th International Software Product Line Conference(SPLC 2007). September 2007, Kyoto, Japan. Computer Society Press, 2007.


38/39

28 | CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025


39/39

REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE Form ApprovedOMB No. 0704-0188

Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, search-ing existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments re-garding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquar-ters Services, Directorate for information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington, VA 22202-4302, and to the Officeof Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project (0704-0188), Washington, DC 20503.

1. AGENCY USE ONLY

(Leave Blank)

2. REPORT DATE

August 2009

3. REPORT TYPE AND DATESCOVERED

Final

4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE

Formulation of a Production Strategy for a Software Product Line

5. FUNDING NUMBERS

FA8721-05-C-0003

6. AUTHOR(S)

Gary J. Chastek, Patrick Donohoe, John D. McGregor

7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES)

Software Engineering Institute

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, PA 15213

8. PERFORMING ORGANIZATIONREPORT NUMBER

CMU/SEI-2009-TN-025

9. SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES)

HQ ESC/XPK

5 Eglin Street

Hanscom AFB, MA 01731-2116

10. SPONSORING/MONITORINGAGENCY REPORT NUMBER

11. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

12A DISTRIBUTION/AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Unclassified/Unlimited, DTIC, NTIS

12B DISTRIBUTION CODE

13. ABSTRACT (MAXIMUM 200 WORDS)

Software product lines are of strategic importance to the organizations that adopt them, affecting both an organizations position in an

existing market and its ability to react to new and changing markets. An organizations production system (i.e., how it builds its products)

is also of strategic importance, directly affecting, for example, that organizations ability to deliver new products quickly (i.e., its time to

market).

The production strategy for a software product line is the high-level description of how the production system realizes both the core as-

sets and products. The production strategy is derived from the organizations business strategy and is intended to coordinate the actions

of the core asset and product developers. The strategy describes how the product line practices should be employed so that the product

line organization will achieve its production goals. This technical note describes a technique, which is based on well-known proceduresfor defining and evaluating a business strategy, for formulating the production strategy of a production system. An example of strategy

creation is provided.

14. SUBJECT TERMS

Production planning, production strategy, production plan

15. NUMBER OF PAGES

39

16. PRICE CODE

17. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OFREPORT

Unclassified

18. SECURITY CLASSIFICATIONOF THIS PAGE

Unclassified

19. SECURITYCLASSIFICATION OF

ABSTRACT

Unclassified

20. LIMITATION OFABSTRACT

UL

NSN 7540-01-280-5500 Standard Form 298 (Rev. 2-89) Prescribed by ANSI Std. Z39-18298-102

Date post:	30-May-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	software-engineering-institute-publications
View:	218 times
Download:	0 times

Formulation of a Production Strategy for a Software Product Line

Documents